Orlando's Ty Tryon Is Tied For 290th After A 10-over 80 In The First Round Monday.

The 17-year-old skied to a 10-over-par 80 on Monday in the first round of his final just-for-fun event, the 101st U.S. Amateur Championship, which means his chances of making the cut today are all but nil.

Tryon has become a national story for electing to turn pro after the Amateur, even though he has two years of high school remaining. Barring a miracle, Tryon will exit the amateur ranks with a whimper.

With television cameras and photographers shadowing him around the difficult East Lake Golf Club, Tryon had a pair of triple-bogeys to essentially wreck his chances of advancing to Wednesday's match play in the nation's top amateur event.

For those second-guessing the decision to turn pro, he didn't exactly offer a convincing argument to the contrary, Tryon admitted.

"That was embarrassing," he said.

For perspective's sake, Tryon is 17 strokes behind leader Robert Godfrey of Clemson, S.C., who shot 63 at East Lake despite bogeys on the last two holes. Lucas Glover of Greenville, S.C., shot 64 at Druid Hills, the event's other stroke-play site.

Even though Druid Hills is the easier of the two tracks, odds are good that Tryon's last moments as an amateur will come tonight when he completes the second round. Only the low 64 players in the field of 312 advance to match play. The projected cut is even-par and Tryon is tied for . . . 290th.

"Hey, I thought I actually held it together pretty well," he said with a laugh. "My bad shots turned out bad and my good shots turned out bad. Nothing went well."

To his credit, Tryon stuck around for a couple of hours afterward, doing a series of interviews about his impending professionalism. He taped one segment about the Amateur with ESPN, which thankfully won't air until Wednesday.

Rollins College senior Rob Oppenheim matched par with a 72 at Druid Hills and has a shot to make match play for the second time in three years.

Thomas Lee, who attended Lake Mary High and now plays at Virginia, also shot 72 at East Lake, once the haunts of amateur legend Bobby Jones and a former site of the PGA Tour Championship and numerous USGA events.